August 14, 2013
Podcast #252 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/08/252-does-the-blood-typing-diet-really-work-how-to-get-fit-for-the-survivor-what-women-can-do-about-a-thick-waist
[0:00:00]
Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: How to get fit for “The Survivor”, white rice vs. brown rice, what causes dry mouth, The best ways to test your gut, do you have lyme disease, and what women can do about a thick waist.
Ben: Woah, is that a slide whistle dude?
Brock: It’s a slide whistle indeed and you know why I’m playing the slide whistler?
Ben: Woah, what was you played before that, was that one of those lip guitar things?
Brock: I believe it’s called a jar harp.
Ben: Yes, a jar harp. I was gonna call it a lip harp. Where, Brock and I are celebrating today because we’re number 1 in iTunes in the USA and Canada. There are that many extremely bored fitness nerds out there….
Brock: And we thank each and everyone of you.
Ben: I don’t know if I’ve ever played my guitar in the podcast before. But here I am.
Brock: I think you had it in the background.
Ben: Did I? Maybe I did.
Brock: It’s beautiful. Isn’t it beautiful?
Brock: I definitely never played the jar harp on here. Anyway.
Ben: Into the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast on iTunes.
Brock: iTunes.
Ben: Okay. Time to get my guitar mood out of the way ‘cause it’s like taking up my entire desk. It’s going well. My left arm is all shrunken.
Brock: Like an apple core?
Ben: I gave blood today. I gave like 50ml of blood.
Brock: So it’s deflated.
Ben: WellnessFX. Yeah. Darn WellnessFX. They did a performance panel on me and well they didn’t do it on, make it sound like they tied me down the railroad tracks.
Brock: And they did it to you.
Ben: Yes. They send like a couple of guys to break my knees and do a blood panel on me. No I drove into….
Brock: That’s bad timing.
Ben: ‘Cause I’m going to the Ancestral Health Symposium this week down at Atlanta to talk about ketogenic diets and athletic performance and I didn’t have all the bio markers that I wanted to be able to mention during the talk so I went into the lab for kinda like a last-minute emergency blood draw today to…
Brock: As people often do when they go to Atlanta.
Ben: That’s right. That’s right.
Brock: Go in for a last-minute blood draw.
Ben: I had to apologize to my blood draw tech for the fact that I basically got a giant pipe vein coming out of my arm. It’s huge. So I walked in there and I’m like I’m sorry I don’t.
Ben: You shouldn’t apologize.
Ben: I was being facetious to her. She didn’t really laugh.
Brock: She stood on the other end of the room and like threw the IV at you ‘cause it was so big?
Ben: Dude. It’s like 7 o’clock in the morning. She probably could have used like a freaking long dart from across the room. Yeah, we would have been fine so. Yeah anyways though, what do you think? Should we jump in to today’s podcast and talk about how women can get nice boxy looking abs?
News Flashes:
Brock: Head on over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/252 and you will find links to some pretty awesome stuff about nails and coffins blowing up your liver and being a loser.
Ben: That’s right, a Biggest Loser.
Brock: These are the notes that I get from Ben. It’s really helpful.
Ben: So I wanna start off by talking about blood typing diets today.
Brock: Alright.
Ben: Because there was a study that came out that I tweeted was another nail in the coffin of blood typing diets and we’ve gotten lots of questions about blood typing diets7 on the podcast before and I’ve done blood typing and I’ve done saliva typing which is put out by Dr. D’Adamo. The same guy that does a lot of that blood typing stuff and I’ve gotten the big list of all the food that you’re supposed to eat and all the foods that you’re supposed to avoid but what this study that came out this month did was it looked at all of the evidence on all of the different 1415 screened references that have been performed looking into any health effects of blood typing diets and there was only 1 study and that study showed a slight drop in LDL cholesterol which, if you listen to the podcast with Jimmy Moore, we just released…
[0:05:15.9]
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: It’s not necessarily a good thing. So anyways, if you are looking into doing the blood typing diet, know that it probably works because you get this big ass list of foods that you’re not supposed to eat and we kinda talked about this being one of the reasons in a previous podcast why allergy testing might not really be the best thing to be doing anyways as well because you also just get a big list of things to avoid and that might be part of the effect that it might have for you on something like weight loss but really zero effect on your health and longevity and you know, risks for cardiovascular disease and all that jazz when it comes to blood typing diets. They completely lack supporting evidence and I kinda put them into the same category because of that as like metabolic typing diets, food allergy testing, that type of thing. They’re simply one of those things where you gotta listen to your body. Yeah, I’ve run into some people who are blood type O, who whatever. They do better on meat and eating like meat and eating like a caveman, stuff like that and maybe there’s something to be said for that. Maybe there’s something to be said for the, you know, talk that goes around that blood type A’s are better on a vegan/vegetarian diet but ultimately zero proof so all this stuff is just blue sky. You should have done your jar harp. Can you play a jar harp and what’s it called? A jaw harp?
Brock: A jaw harp.
Ben: A jaw harp.
Brock: You can’t make it sound sad though, it’s a happy instrument.
Ben: No, it’s like a dolphin. It’s like always happy. Even if it’s got a spear coming out of its backside it’s got a smile on its face so.
Brock: Nice.
Ben: Anyways though, speaking of dolphins and spears coming out of their side, if you’re going to eat a high-fat diet and you don’t want to “blow up” your liver, you need to include fish oil. And I tweeted this based off of another study that came out this month that looked into a bunch of different variations of a high fat diet and what the effect was on fat metabolism and glucose metabolism and specifically, what they found was that the high fat diets that were consumed in the absence of good omega-3 fatty acid intake actually resulted in some hepatic damage or liver damage and a higher risk of you know, the fatty liver type of disease markers compared to eating a high-fat diet in the presence of omega-3 fatty acids and fish oils and this is something that has been shown in some other studies, there’s another one recently done with sunflower oil like a high oleic acid what’s called a high omega-9 based sunflower oil which also has a lot of omega-6 fatty acids and these omega-6 fatty acids and omega-9 fatty acids and all these fats are going to be consuming a higher number of anyways whether you’re on a healthy low fat diet or an unhealthy low-fat diet, just more fats in your diet, you’re gonna be getting more fatty acid period but these fatty acids take up the same receptor sites in your body as the receptor sites the omega-3 acids adhere to and so what’s important is that when you’re eating a high fat diet you need to make sure that you kinda saturate your body with a lot of these omega-3 fatty acids and saturated fatty acids by the way as well and less of these plant-based oils, these omega-6s, omega-9s, not that those are, those should be completely eliminated from the diet but you need to skew your diet towards higher omega-3 fatty acid intake and in particular, for this study showed that this was very important for the liver so I recommend to anyone on a high-fat diet, go out and get like an omega-3, omega-6 fatty acid index test and that’s just like a, it’s a blood test you can get that gives you your ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids and it just gives you kinda a good idea of whether you are doing a decent job with your omega-3 fatty acid intake and if you’re not, or if you’re getting too many omega-6s, you may want to adjust things and I got 2 words that might bring a frowny face to a lot of people but nut butter is the biggest thing I see in people who tend to have a lot of omega-6s or excessive omega-6 fatty acid intake so.
Brock: And I love the almond butter. I love it.
Ben: Be super duper careful with that stuff ‘cause that tends to have a lot of omega-6’s in it.
[0:10:00.6]
Brock: Just crap.
Ben: Word of caution and make sure that if you gotta have your nut butter, at least be taking a good amount of fish oil as well. So.
Brock: But isn’t fish oil gonna give us prostate cancer?
Ben: That’s possible but if you had to choose between your liver and your prostate, I think that ultimately, the liver is more essential to life than prostate but.
Brock: Touche.
Ben: I don’t know. We’ve have to check out the studies where they gank liver out of rats and gank prostrates. Prostates.
Brock: Prostrates.
Ben: I made that mistake in church before singing the hymns where they use the word prostrate and I said prostate instead. Anyways.
Brock: I’m not gonna say anything about that at all.
Ben: Embarrassing Sundays, school mistake. So there you go.
Brock: Embarrassing.
Ben: Alright the next thing…..
Brock: Yes.
Ben: The last thing I wanted to talk about was biggest loser style weight loss and I recently talked about this in a newsletter that I sent out. I do newsletters every week, from quickanddirtytips.com the get fit guy newsletter and I always kinda expound on some of these studies and for this one, if you want biggest loser style weight loss, you need to prepare for a drop in your metabolism of nearly 30%.
Brock: Woah.
Ben: And there was a study and this one actually came out last year but I just not came across it. It shows a metabolic slowing with massive weight loss despite preservation of fat free mass. What that means is that they took a bunch of these obese and overweight people and they put them through a 30-week weight loss program that was very similar to the type of weight loss program experienced by people who do the biggest loser competition so you know, freakin’ 3 hours plus of exercise per day, calorie restricted, 800 to a thousand calorie diet, and of course extreme weight loss. And normally, when you lose weight, your metabolism drops a little bit anyways ‘cause frankly, you’re not having to move as much fat around but as these folks experience the drop in metabolic rate that was far over and above what was expected to be simply a loss in weight. It was almost 30%. It was like 29 and a half percentage that their metabolic rate declined and stayed declined after they had lost the weight meaning that they were at a much higher predisposition to gain that weight back later on after losing weight and so really serious issues with these you know, rapid body weight loss programs, kinda biggest loser style-esque competitions that word, I just made up, by the way: biggest loser style-esque. We need to make sure we trademark that one.
Brock: Yup, trademark that.
Ben: Trademark it. Anyways though, be careful with that. Be careful with any type of rapid weight loss program because I think that sometimes the word starvation mode is kinda over-used but that’s true starvation mode. So frankly, you know, if you got your Jillian Michaels poster hanging on the wall and you’re paranoid on the treadmill, you know, 3 miles a day and putting a lock on your refrigerator, you might end up doing more metabolic harm than good and this kinda returns to what we talked about a few weeks ago on the podcast if you’re gonna drop calories and trying to lose weight as quickly as possible while maintaining lean muscle, and you wanna keep your metabolism elevated, you drop your calories by between 20 and 30% and no more than that which is pretty easy to figure out if you’re eating a 2000 calorie diet, you wouldn’t want to drop anymore than, what’s that come up to, 400 calories to 500 calories.
Brock: Yeah. That seems more realistic too like being able to enjoy life at the same time as you drop that much calories and it makes you a little bit crazy.
Ben: Exactly. Exactly.
Special Announcements:
Brock: So very soon we’ll be able to record another, one of our famous and well-loved in real life together in the same spot. Podcast.
Ben: Usually we’re not alive when we’re recording this podcast.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: We are in fact just ghost.
Brock: Oh you know what I mean.
Ben: But yeah. Brock and I are gonna be chilling in Whistler because I’m racing Ironman Canada….
Brock: In Whistler…..
Ben: Brock is coming over with his pompoms to …..
Brock: I was going to raise it and I realized it would be complete misery. Although kudos to Ben for encouraging me to do it.
Ben: Yeah, Brock emailed me and he’s like I’ve got a lead on a race entry and I’m like come on over and do it. Nice long day.
Brock: That was the part that scared me. It’s like well, the swim will be okay, the bike ride will probably kill you but….
Ben: Yeah, speaking of chopping off your prostate.
[0:15:02.8]
Brock: Anyway, we’re going to be in Whistler for Ironman Canada so if anybody wants to come and hangout and ask Ben some last minute questions, when’s that, on Friday, the 23rd, we’ll be hanging out in Moguls Coffee House.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Drop on by and you can check it out on facebook.com/BGfitness.
Ben: Yeah, you can RSVP over there. We’ll put a link in the show notes but for anybody who’s gonna be up at Whistler, I know we’ve got a lot of triathlete listeners who are going up there to do Ironman Canada, check out the show notes. What is this, 252?
Brock: 252.
Ben: bengreenfieldfitness.com/252. We’ll put a link to that facebook event and then also I’ve put up a facebook page for the London meetup. I’ll be over….
Brock: You’re meeting up all over the place.
Ben: Yeah and that will be September 13th to the 15th, I’ll be over there. Probably gonna do like a little bit of a primal outdoor workshop with Darryl Edwards, the fitness explorer guy who we had a podcast episode with him inside the Ben Greenfield Fitness phone app which you could listen to but we’re gonna do a workshop in a park or something over there and anyways, we’re gonna put up a big group page, a big facebook page for the London meetup. If you’re not on facebook, then I’m sorry, you completely missed out and you can’t be part of any events that we do so….
Brock: And please join us here on planet earth.
Ben: That’s right. Join us and Mark Zuckerberg down here where there’s actual real people on facebook live.
Brock: My mom’s on facebook for goodness sakes. What are you doing?
Ben: So we’ll put a link to London and a link to Ironman Canada in the show notes and then finally I know this is out there in the future but February 6th to March 6th 2014 is the Perfect Health Diet Retreat in Austin, Texas. I’ll be presenting there March 4th to the 6th and it’s like this 30-day retreat that immerses you into the perfect health diet, perfect way to kinda detox towards the beginning of the year. Wrap your head around how much you should be eating the perfect health diet that is the one diet on the face of the planet that I really get behind and endorse hard core so this is your chance to go and learn how to cook the meals, kinda get you set for life in terms of the way you should be eating and we’re also gonna be doing a lot of stuff in terms of like physical movement, exercise, that type of thing so I’ll put a link in the show notes for that or you can check it out over at albertoaks.com so for those of you who want to eat a perfect health diet, the rest of you eating an imperfect diet can just miss out and ruin your life. So…
Brock: Yup. There you go.
Bree: Hey Ben, this is Bree from Alaska. I’m just calling to give you some feedback on the low-carb protocol. I used it in my half-Ironman last weekend and absolutely rocked it. I’ve been following a low-carb triathlete diet plan for several months now and I’ve been feeling great and hitting all my marks on training and it was really nice to put it all into practice on race day. I followed your recommendations on using Ucan SuperStarch and master amino pattern pills throughout the race and I think I only consumed about 600 calories and I PR-ed by over 10 minutes on a more difficult course on my previous PR so I just wanted to give you a big big thanks and tell you that it works and I’m excited to keep plugging along and try it on my next race so thank you for all you do, both you and Brock. You guys rock! Thanks a lot. I’ll talk to you soon.
Listener Q&A:
Shane: Hey Ben, it’s Shane from South Africa. In 2 months time, it looks like I’m gonna be on Survivor South Africa and I just wanna know what sort of training and what sort of diet I should get myself on to best prepare for this. I’m pretty fit right now, running and exercising probably 2 hours a day. Yeah, any direction would help. Thanks.
Brock: I hate to say it but I didn’t know Survivor was still on the air. I haven’t watched it since the 1990s.
Ben: And those people know who read the recent article I wrote at bengreenfieldfitness.com, I haven’t had TV reception in a decade so I have never actually watched Survivor but I am familiar with the physical challenges that they have on Survivor and….
Brock: I’d loved that certainly in the 1998.
Ben: Was that back when there were like spandex and sporting Mohawks? Was that 1998?
Brock: Yeah, the only thing that you’re allowed to wear was legwarmers and headbands.
Ben: Nice. Nice. So first of all, I did learn something interesting about the challenges that they do for Survivor.
[0:20:00.3]
Did you know that when they give them the physical challenges that they do on that show that they actually have like a dream team like this group of men and women who work as assistance and stand-ins for the season of filming?
Brock: What?
Ben: And the dream team does the whole physical challenge. Like runs the whole course as the participants who are gonna be doing the course like watch and then they turn on the cameras and the participants get to do it so they kinda like do a dry run.
Brock: Oh, okay. So they’re not doing it for them, they’re just sort of demonstrating. If you were awesome like us, you would do it like this.
Ben: Yeah, exactly. Seems like it could have been demoralizing like you put a bunch of you know, like demigods up there and have them do it and then you turn to do it.
Brock: And then you turn to do it. Yeah.
Ben: Your turn.
Brock: Nice.
Ben: Anyways, some really interesting physical challenges that they do like they had one where they had this giant ball that you have to roll. Like this huge giant heavy ball and you have to roll it across the field and into a gull and the first tribe to score 3 goals wins the award and it’s just this huge like ball like the size of like 10 people and they just roll it.
Brock: Do they try to stop, like does the other team gets in the way of the ball?
Ben: I don’t think so. I think you’re just rolling the ball….
Brock: That sounds dangerous.
Ben: You work as a team. I think Survivor in itself is like a safe activity.
Brock: No I guess not.
Ben: I imagine that there’s a pretty comprehensive waiver you have to sign. They had another one where each team has to race in the sand, like in these 5 different circles in the sand and within each circle, there’s a bag. So you gotta dig, find the bag, and then get back to the finish mat and to score, there has to actually be at least one hand in the bag well, any part of the body touches the finish mat so you’re basically just like digging holes in the sand and running bags back and forth. They do this one more where they’ve got patted duffel bags and you gotta knock your adversaries out of the ring into the sea using these patted duffel bags….
Brock: I like that. That sounds like fun.
Ben: That’s like the Japanese game shows where they’ve got like people running…
Brock: Totally. Running like whatever.
Ben: Yeah, like that. They’ve got one more where you got to run through a golem bridge. Kinda like that TV show Gladiator, I did watch that where there’s like all these floating obstacles and you gotta collect all these flags on the other side and you’ve got 2 opposing tribe members who are like hurling these big giant swinging bags of sand at you as you’re running through the golem bridge so that’s an interesting one.
Brock: That’s awesome.
Ben: really, most of them, most of the Survivor challenges, and I’m gonna link to a website that basically highlights and showcases all of the toughest survivor challenges that they had if you wanna go and check them out and have some evening entertainment or have a good time laughing at photos of people getting completely destroyed, essentially a lot of them combine thinking and exercising simultaneously.
Brock: That’s not a good combo.
Ben: Well, I think it’s really interesting because if you look at this whole central governor model of fatigue, the idea is that you have this are in your brain called your singular cortex and it’s responsible for regulating your heart rate and your blood pressure and controlling a lot of these physiological parameters of exercise but is also responsible for decision making, for attention to detail, for focus on detail, for whether you’re doing a financial spreadsheet or whether you’re just like trying to figure out a puzzle or something well at the same time you’re sweating and moving and so what the central governor theory of fatigue is is that your brain is trying to divvy up oxygen and glucose to all the different muscles that are working and it’s going to preferentially shuttle the survival needs to your heart and your brain and will begin to shut down your muscles if you begin to run low on your oxygen and glucose to your heart and your brain.
Brock: That seems smart.
Ben: But… Yeah, it is smart. It’s a cool little survival mechanism so that we don’t just like go until we die. But then there’s also there’s part of your cortex that in addition to having this built-in survival mechanism, also tends to shut down your body prematurely based on decision fatigue. This is one of the reasons why like running on a treadmill is so hard because you’ve got all these different numbers and you’ve got this dashboard in front of you and you’re trying to focus on running and there’s a little bit of boredom in play and your cortex just tries to shut down your body. There’s just too much decision-making and complexity and stuff going on in front of you and so you have a crappy workout. It’s also one of the reasons why you have a crappy workout if you go straight from work at the end of the day and you’re just like whatever, strap on your running shoes and head on outdoors or straight to the gym. It’s like a lot of times you have a bad workout because you’ve got a singular cortex fatigue basically. And your brain is down regulating heart rate and blood pressure because you’ve been engaging in decision-making fatigue.
[0:25:06.9]
And so there’s kinda 2 different ways that your brain can prematurely shut down your body, limiting you of your ideal performance potential. So the idea here, if you’re going to have to exercise and complete complex tasks at the same time, would be to both train your brain in how to have less decision fatigue while you’re exercising and also train your central governor to be able to go for a longer period of time, delivering oxygen, glucose to muscles before you shut down your brain so ultimately, from a training standpoint, as far as the part about training your central governor, I would make sure that as far as your actual workouts go, you’re doing some fairly intense metcom workouts. When you say you’re running and exercising about 2 hours a day, I’d be staying away from much of the chronic cardio and I would be instead doing the type of workouts that I talked about in the article and I’ll link to it in the show notes. I have an article on the website called The Ultimate Guide to Get Ready for an Obstacle Race, Mud Run, Spartan Race, or Tough Mutter and it’s based off in this program called the Race Day Domination Program and what it is is a combination of strength, stamina, and what’s called hybrid fitness where you’re combining strength training and cardio workouts into one hybrid training session. So you might train your grip strength by doing a set of farmers’ walks with dumbbells then you transport an awkward or heavy object like a weighted sweater of a weighted vest for the next station that you do that might involve, you know, pushing a plate across a gym or doing a towel pole with a plate sitting on a towel across the gym from point a to point b and then you do 2 minutes of stair climbing with a weighted vest or holding dumbbells and then move on to the next exercise but it’s basically a lot of hybrid slightly awkward workouts whereas all….
Brock: It sounds like fun.
Ben: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that Race Day Domination Program is one I would recommend you for this. Another example kinda like obstacle course workout that’s out of that program is you run 400 meters and then you do 25 kettlebell swings and then you run 400 meters and then you do 25 burpees and then you run 400 meters and you do 25 kettlebell thrusters, run 400 meters and then you do 25 pushups and you do that 3 times through as a circuit. Very kinda like cross fit wad-esque type of workout as far as that’s concerned. The issue is that you need to train yourself to think at the same time that you’re doing these things….
Brock: I was gonna say you need to do some math instead of burpees.
Ben: Yeah, that’s the tough part and so a few recommendations that I have for you. First of all, teach yourself to engage in new movements while you’re exercising. For example, I recently got a steel mace from Onnit. It’s just like a giant, badass steel mace like what the ancient Hindu warriors used to use and so I’ve been learning how to swing….
Brock: It doesn’t have spikes on, everybody. Don’t worry. When he said that the first time I was like oh my god its got spikes, it’s gonna kill one of his children. He still could, but it doesn’t have spikes.
Ben: I could probably arrange to have spikes installed on it though. That might be a cool mod. I’ll have to look into that.
Brock: Maybe some Nerf spikes.
Ben: Anyways though, that would actually be quite dangerous because I’ve hit myself a few times already in the lower back doing swings but you do figure 8s with it, you do like squats-stands with it, spearing exercises, shoveling exercises, what they call grave diggers, all these different moves and it’s awkward and the cogs are turning in your brain while you’re swinging it around because it’s awkward. Club bells, similar thing. I have a set of Club bells from Onnit who doesn’t sponsor the show by the way, I just have this stuff that they sent me that I have just been using and a kettlebell from them as well, one of their chimp kettlebells and these are all awkward objects right. You gotta think at the same time and ‘cause if you don’t, you’re gonna crush your head or crush your toe. Or you know, throw out your shoulder. And so you gotta pay out a lot more attention into these than when you’re just like sitting on a concept rowing machine or running around a track with you know, foam coming out the corner of your mouth so….
Brock: You know what we do in Canada instead of swinging mace? We shovel our walks.
Ben: Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. But the ancient Hindu warriors did not….
Brock: That’s badass.
Ben: ….. shovel their walks. They had peons that did that for them while they swung their steel maces around.
Brock: Get the peons clear this no off….
Ben: The Hindu warriors had ancient Canadian peons that work for them, shoveling their snow.
Brock: Of course.
Ben: Anyways though, so get yourself used to working with awkward objects and put yourself in awkward exercise situations. Look into that Race Day Domination Program and the obstacle race day workouts that are into that. Familiarize yourself with some of the more difficult Survivor challenges that I’ll link to in the show notes and then finally, for some of your metcom work that you might do like in a bicycle or on a treadmill, grab something like the Brainscape app.
[0:30:10.8]
And I don’t know if you’ve seen the Brainscape app before Brock but it’s this app that you could put on iPhone. I believe that it’s compatible with a Kindle or an iPad as well and it allows you to make your own flashcards or train yourself on your own subject. It could be, you know, learning French or Algebra or financial terms you know, anything that you could think of really in terms of like knowledge junkie kind of subjects and it kinda is like a crash course so it brings you to flashcards you happen to memorize as you go through this Brainscape app. And it’s actually a really cool app for learning but you could be on one of those while you’re working out at say above your aerobic threshold in the bike and teaching your cortex to process at the same time that you’re exercising. This is important. You don’t know how many athletes who I’ve coached or who I’ve done consults with after say like an Ironman triathlon that they poured their life into for weeks on end and they destroy their race because they forget to think during the race. They forget to do things like keep track of the exact number of calories they’re consuming per hour or the ounces of water that they’ve taken in or the number of kilometers that they travelled since their last you know, fuel intake and just like, you gotta be thinking the whole time if you really want to crack the nut of something like Ironman and it’s a similar kind of deal with prepping for something like you know, Survivor for example, you know, the Spartan death race that they do in Vermont is similar where you’re like memorizing Bible verses trekking to 5 miles on the top of a mountain, carrying an eggshell on a teaspoon and then reciting the Bible verse when you get on top of the mountain. You know, if you forget it you get down and then you get another egg or another verse or whatever. You know, similar deal like you gotta learn how to think and how to push your body at the same time and if you do both of those things, then you’re gonna be in a pretty good place in terms of like brain hacking. I’m writing an article by the way for bengreenfieldfitness.com right now with a lot more advanced concepts on how to literally hack your brain and turn yourself into a complete kinda like similar cortex beast during exercise but in the meantime, grab that Brainscape app and do some of your metcom work on that. They actually have this device called the Neuro active which is a brain training program and it is this like bike that you could get for your house. You could check that out, I believe it’s at braincenteramerica.com but it’s a brain fitness program that you can do while you’re exercising like, while you’re doing a cardio workout for example, you can put in this 15-20 minute CD and literally it walks you through all of these different performance, hand-eye coordination, visually scanning, behavioral flexibility, temporal order memory, like all of these different things that you’re trying to work on. You know, just get like a jet fighter pilot flying a plane at high speed under a bunch of gees, having also you know, pay attention to everyone else that’s going around them. You gotta train your brain to be able to do that and I think that if you do that, you’re definitely gonna have an advantage for being fit for something like Survivor. As far as the nutrition goes, I mean from what I understand, you get some fish, you get some local produce basically as much of that as you can gather which usually isn’t much. I think you also get some canned beans and some rice and corn. I would actually consider making sure your gut lining is really sewed up pretty well. I would be supplementing stuff like Glutamine, colostrum, yum bone broth or some type of hydrolyzed protein source, making sure that you’re not really doing much of a low low carb diet going into something like this like you got enough muke in production for a healthy gut and mucosal lining. Essentially eliminate anything that might give you leaky gut going into this thing. I think that it’s really gonna help and I think the advantages in doing that outweigh the advantages of say like eating the same diet going in that you’re gonna get exposed to when you get there. I think that going in with a strong and healthy gut is a better idea and I know that there are people out there like say Robb Wolf for instance, I know encourages like folks who are going in to the military who are going to have pretty decent gluten exposure in the military to like eat lots of gluten or expose their body to potentially gut damage foods going into you know, the military and I don’t know if I like that idea as much as really building up a nice solid strong healthy gut lining and doing as much damage as possible before you actually go in and start to put your gut under a lot of stress.
[0:35:06.9]
I’m a bigger fan of going in you know as low-stress as prepared state as possible and then just start to take the damage and put up with it as long as you possibly can.
Brock: Oh yeah, if you’re gonna go somewhere where you know you’re gonna get punched in the face, you wouldn’t stand around and punch yourself in the face before you go there.
Ben: Yeah, it’s kinda like….
Brock: You wanna go in with a good strong face.
Ben: Yeah, exactly. It’s the reason why I’m sitting around for the next 2 weeks before Ironman Canada. It’s like I wanna go in there not beat up so…..
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: My body restored and recovered and basically be in that prime state. So yeah, I’d do all those things. At the end of the show we’ll try and remember to give you the address to send your check to after you win Survivor Africa. We’ll take a 10% commission off of that.
Brock: Even though we totally made fun of the show for like the first minute.
Ben: If you wind up dead, we will delete this recording and deny that it ever existed. So there you go.
Brock: And remember folks, the best thing you can do is put yourself in an awkward workout position.
Ben: Hey Ben, it’s Ben Harisson from UK ______[0:35:14.5]. Just got a quick question for you about rice. I’m basically looking for some sort of carbohydrate put alongside big meals like steamed vegetables and grass fed butter. And I’m looking to get back 30 grams of carbs alongside the meal and yeah, I heard there are some problems with reheating rice so I was wondering about buying frozen white rice in the bag and you know, whether it’s better to cook it yourself. But if brown rice is better and yeah, just wondering if you got any thoughts on that too. Okay buddy, love the podcast. Thanks for your help.
Brock: Yeah. I have heard, it’s funny, there’s been a real backswing for the longest time it has been brown rice, stay away from the white rice. It metabolizes right into sugar, don’t eat white rice, brown rice is the way to go. And there seems to be a complete reversal just like the last, I don’t know, 6 months to a year.
Ben: Yeah, it’s because of arsenic. I just like to throw around that word around….
Brock: Seriously?
Ben: That’s gonna be my catch-all answer whenever I….
Brock: Arsenic.
Ben: It’s the arsenic in the….
Brock: Kids, don’t touch that, it’s arsenic.
Ben: It could be the arsenic in that. Yeah stay away. Actually brown rice does contain arsenic. It has significantly more arsenic than white rice and they’ve done tests, the what’s it called, the consumer reports magazine or consumer reports whatever it’s called, they did their test on rice and they found that brown rice brans, some of the brans that they tested had at least 50% more than the safe limit of arsenic per serving and a few had double the safe limit. And that includes….
Brock: Is that something that’s naturally, sorry.
Ben: That includes stuff that was made with brown rice and I don’t think it’s natural. I think it’s part of the processing of rice like it’s not like naturally high….
Brock: So somebody is actually adding arsenic?
Ben: Well it’s probably getting leeched or somehow on to the brown rice from pollutants or during the processing or whatever so….
Brock: Let’s hope so.
Ben: It’s got higher arsenic contents and that includes like brown rice syrup and brown rice pasta and rice cakes and brown rice crisps and you know, all of these processed foods made from brown rice. Brown rice also is harder to digest. It’s higher nutrient inhibitors than white rice because it has all these phytates in it so yeah, it’s got like a higher nutrient content but the anti-nutrients that are in it kinda reduce the bioavailability of all those vitamins and minerals to the point where it’s a little bit of a catch 22. We actually, my wife and I, we don’t do brown rice anymore at all. We do white rice when we’re gonna do rice and it does not have the same type of arsenic issues as brown rice does and you know, it’s kind of a safer, easier to digest starch. Sure it’s not like super duper high in nutrients or anything but honestly, if you’re turning to rice for your nutrient intake for the day, you probably got bigger fish to fry anyways so yeah, that’s the deal with brown rice. I’m definitely a bigger fan of white rice just because arsenic is a carcinogen. As far as reheating the rice, yes, there is some evidence that uncooked rice contains these spores of bacillus cereus which is a bacteria that can cause food poisoning and when you leave the rice at room temperature, those spores can actually grow into bacteria. And so the longer that….
Brock: Wait, sorry. Was that uncooked rice or cooked rice?
Ben: Well uncooked rice contains the spores but when you cook the rice a lot of the spores can still survive and the longer that the cooked rice is left at room temperature, the more likely it is that those bacteria and the toxins in the bacteria, yeah producing can flourish so you wanna serve rice as soon as it’s been cooked and if that’s impossible, you wanna cool the rice as quickly as possible after you’ve cooked it and keep it in the fridge basically not for very long.
[0:40:10.6]
I wouldn’t really keep rice leftovers around for more than about a day or so if you’re gonna be reheating them and reserving them. And then just make sure when you do reheat them that it’s steaming hot and that you really do get it up to a pretty good temperature. I wouldn’t be double reheating it. You know, I kinda sorta like the idea that unless something is pickles and lacto-fermented and preserved properly, that you’re pretty careful with leftovers. That’s something I picked up from Dave Asprey at the Become Superhuman event and you know, he talked about him and his wife Len and I really don’t do much in the way of leftovers because of this potential, this high potential of leftovers including rice to grow this food spores and potentially have a lot more bacteria and toxins so I generally try and get rid of leftovers unless they’re like fermented, pickled, you know, that type of thing, pretty quickly after they’re made, you know, the dehydrated stuff, that’s another one, the dehydrated crackers, things of that nature. You know, I’ll obviously eat that stuff after it’s been stored but as far as like you know, big old meals and casseroles and stuff like that, yeah, you gotta be kinda careful with that kind of stuff as far as how long you let it sit around.
Brock: That’s why it’s good to freeze stuff.
Ben: And as far as getting 30 grams of carbs, yeah, I mean, you know, 30 grams of carbs is like the baseline amount of carbs that your brain needs per day as far as like optimum glucose for your brain to not ultimately shut down. I’m a bigger fan of most folks getting a 100-200 grams of carbs a day.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: But you know, 30 grams of carbs is literally like a cup and a half or so of that cooked white rice, you know, sweet potato, yam, that kind of thing. I honestly don’t count that much for me when it comes to carbohydrates, I’m on such a low carbohydrate diet right now for this whole ketosis thing that for me is generally I know that one big serving of carbohydrates usually kinda like after my workout at the end of the day is about what it takes for me to stay in ketosis and any other trace amounts of carbohydrates for me are coming in from you know, vegetable-based fibers and seeds and nuts that might work their way in through the day but as far as getting 30 grams of carbs in, yeah like a cup and a half or so of cooked white rice, a nice sweet potato or yam and you’re looking pretty close to that 30 grams or 120 calorie range-ish.
Brock: Delicious.
Bruce: Hi Ben, this is Bruce from Michigan. I love the show. I just wanna thank you for helping me become a better triathlete in a better personal realm, my health. My question is approximately 6 months ago I began to experience severe dry mouth during the night hours, while sleeping. It wakes me up where I have to get up and drink water. My diet is very healthy, a lot of greens, smoothie a day, a lot of greens, a lot of whole foods, some meat, some grains, pretty well mixture of everything. I do train a lot, I do sweat a lot, that’s why I try to refill, hydrate myself with water. When I drink excessive amounts of water I find out in the middle of the night, peeing in and out so do you have any idea what should be causing this? I would appreciate some insight. I just did turn 50, that might have to do something with it. You and Brock are definitely great to listen to and I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks.
Brock: You know I hate to say it but I think I’m reaching that age too. I’ve been waking up with really dry eyes and dry mouth. Bruce I feel you.
Ben: Are you licking your lips too? Your lips kinda….
Brock: Yeah, my lips are kinda stuck on my teeth. I look like a shark when I wake up.
Ben: We may have to turn the podcast hosting position over to that sexy like English female voice that we talked about doing, if you’re getting this dry mouth issue because I did not wanna hear lips. I did not wanted to hear that.
Brock: Hey sunny.
Ben: Anyways though, extreme dry mouth. I mean you can certainly as you age, experience more of the dry moth issue and part of that can be due to a lack of mucin production. A little bit less amino acid absorption as you age. Sometimes you’ll see this a lot of times in people who are following a very low-carbohydrate diet. You know, I just got on mentioning your brain needs that 30 grams of glucose per day but generally you need you know, in some cases, if you’re an exercising individual, 3, 4 ,5 times more than that for actual glycoprotein production for your joints or mucin production for the lining of your stomach or you know, the soft tissue in your mouth so I would certainly not be eating a super duper low carbohydrate diet if you’re getting dry mouth so I would pay attention to that. Staying hydrated, duh, that should be kind of a gimme but you wanna make sure that you’re also getting adequate electrolytes in your diet. I’m a huge fan of….
[0:45:07.4]
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: Doing like a couple shots of like a trace minerals in the morning or like a really good high quality Himalayan sea salt which has like 70 plus trace minerals already in it. I personally use both like I do a couple of shots of trace minerals in the morning, I sprinkle Himalayan sea salt like in my morning kale smoothie, on my lunch, dinner, with my tequila shots, whatever. You know, Himalayan sea salt like it’s going out of style so a few other things that can help as far as dry mouth goes are….
Brock: Before we leave the hydration thing, I just wanted to ask, I’ve heard and I don’t know if this is true but the symptoms of like overhydration are very similar to the symptoms of dehydration in which often involve dry mouth.
Ben: I’ve never heard of that but it’s possible.
Brock: I was just thinking maybe in an effort to get rid of the dry mouth versus gone too far.
Ben: You mean it’s almost like a warning signal like your body sends you that you’ve had too much water so your mouth gets dry?
Brock: Yeah, I know like all those articles and all those running magazines that warn you about hyponatremia like it’s something that’s gonna jump out and get every marathon mentioned, that’s one of the symptoms.
Ben: I’ve never seen that but that’s really interesting. We have to look into that now. It must be the Canadian running magazines that are saying that.
Brock: Probably.
Ben: Yeah, anyways.
Brock: They’re way ahead of everyone.
Ben: So there are like herbs probably on your spice rack that can help out a little bit in terms of stimulating saliva production probably the one that’s most popular is cayenne pepper. I really like putting cayenne pepper on stuff anyways cause it stimulates your salivary glands, gives you a little bit of a dopamine release from food somewhere from what you get from a sugary food or a salty food so cayenne pepper. Fennel is another one that can be a salivary stimulant. Rosemary is another one that you can use and then aniseed which is kinda like a licoricey, fennely type of herb that can also help out a little bit with dry mouth and stimulate saliva production.
Brock: I would put that all into a glass of water and baby you got yourself a stew!
Ben: Let’s market that. What should we call it? Wet mouth?
Brock: The saliva…. Yeah, the wet mouth soup.
Ben: We’ll put it in those effervescent tablets and just like market it in Walgreens pharmacy stores and call it Wet Mouth.
Brock: Perfect.
Ben: And it’s just like a picture of a mouth with just saliva dripping out the corner.
Brock: Dripping down the chin.
Ben: Everyone will want that. Give you that kissable wet mouth. That sounds so bad. So everyone is like ripping out their headphones right now.
Brock: I’m in everybody’s ears right now.
Ben: Yeah, okay. So anyways.
Brock: Yeah, what were we talking about?
Ben: Work in some of those herbs, work in some of those electrolytes and minerals. Make sure you get an adequate carbohydrates. We’ll look into this overhydration issue but don’t overhydrate. That’s for sure. And those are some of the areas that I will start with as far as the dry mouth goes.
Simon: Hi Ben. I was wondering whether you can send me a short list, the basic details on what you recommend people test themselves to get a baseline of an overall picture of health. This article “How to Fix Your Gut” is very comprehensive and I just wanted to have a more concise list. That would be great if you do that. Cheers.
Brock: Do you think Simon is somehow indicating that you go a little far in some of your posts? Maybe you give a little too much information?
Ben: No that, how to detox your body post was fairly comprehensive and I realize that there was a lot of information in that and we’ll link to it in the show notes for anybody who wants to go….
Brock: I think pretty much every post that’s been for the Beyond Training book has been epic.
Ben: Well it is a book.
Brock: Which is awesome.
Ben: Yes. It is a book.
Brock: But because it isn’t a website it just seems that much more intimidating.
Ben: Yeah, I would not wish on anyone to actually read an entire book while burning their eyeballs on a computer but at least putting some of the chapters out there for you and you know, that fix your gut chapter, yeah, I listed of a lot of tests and so let’s say that you’re listening in and you want that concise exact recommendation of what you should get. I can tell you right now that what I start most people off with who are having gut issues is the metametrix panel called the GI effects panel. It also goes by the Genova diagnostics name but metametrix and Genova, I believe it’s metametrix that bought out genova diagnostics so most of the metametrix panels or most of the genova diagnostic panels are now listed as metametrix panels.
[0:50:13.7]
I’m pretty sure that’s the way that it went. Basically, what the metametrix panel does, the GI effects panel is it looks for any imbalances in the flora in your gut, it will look at fatty acids, it can look at anything that might be causing gut distress like yeast, candida, fungus, things of that nature and it really gives you a decent handle on kind of a big picture overview of your gut health. That’s a really really good place to start and that usually takes care of about like 80% of the issues. One of the problems with that GI effects panel is that it doesn’t screen for parasites. So if you do a lot of travel or say you’ve got gut issues that tend to come and go almost on a regular cycle, which is common with parasite issues, a lot of times like every 2 weeks, you know, when they hatch, which is a lovely visualization. What happens is they tend to kinda be more active at night so you go through these periods of like GI distress and like crappy sleep and sometimes like literally, crappy sleep.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: Basically you know, like clockwork every couple of weeks or so and for something like that, I’ll put a link to all the stuff in the show notes by the way, you’d get something more like a comprehensive parasitology test. Both the GI effects kit from metametrix which is the same as a stool analysis and a comprehensive parasitology test, both are kits that you can get sent to your home that involve actual stool testing, stool samples, so. You basically….
Brock: Sounds like Simon may not be in America. Is this something that he’ll be able to do in the UK or across the pond?
Ben: You can get tests like this. There’s a little bit more difficult to come by and frankly, I am kinda in the process of doing a little bit more research for UK, Canadian, Dubai, and Australian clients. Four different categories of clients who have had some trouble hunting down poo tests for and for some reason, poop doesn’t travel well internationally for some strange reason.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: So.
Brock: Surprising.
Ben: If there are listeners who wanna help me out, if you’re a physician in the UK, Canada, Australia, or like the United Arab Emirates, and you know of home parasitology exams or home GI exams that people can do, please write into the show. Leave a comment in the show notes and let us know because it’s certainly something that I’ve had a little bit more difficulty tracking down outside of the States so yeah, you do your GI effects….
Brock: A bit of homework for everybody.
Ben: Your parasitology test, if you tend to have some issues that indicate that you may have some parasite problems and then you can move on and look at just a few other things. First of all, one of the issues I’ve mentioned before in the podcast that I think flies under the radar is small intestine bacterial overgrowth. If you tend to get gassy or bloated when you a. eat carbohydrates or b. eat fermented foods like kombucha and kiefer and things of that nature, I would not rule out doing a breath test and there’s a company called QuinTron that will send you a breath test to your home. It’s a very simple test to administer. You drink like a glucose containing solution and it measures the amount of gasses produced by the bacteria in your intestine and what happens is that if there’s a very sharp prize in what’s called parts per million of the methane and the carbon dioxide that’s produced by the bacteria in your gut then this can indicate that you have a bacterial overgrowth in your stomach. And you can actually give yourself a bacterial overgrowth believe it or not by taking too many fermented foods, and eating too many probiotics in combination with a lot of starches and sugars that are feeding them and so this is something especially in people who are eating a lot of calories like athletes that I definitely wouldn’t rule out if your GI effects kit comes out clear and you don’t have parasites, I would do a breath test to rule out this SIBO or small intestine bacterial overgrowth. So you can look into a test like that at breathtest.com but it wouldn’t be the first thing that you do. It would be something that you’d do based off of symptoms that you have. Today we won’t go into what you’d do if you find out that you have any of these issues like parasites and SIBO and stuff like that but if you go read that article that we we’ll link to in the show notes, I list a lot of the herbs and the fixes for stuff like this because it is stuff that you can fix. There are 2 other tests that commonly get recommended for gut issues.
[0:55:02.9]
One is food allergy testing using like an elisa test or an alcat test or any of these pin prick tests. Blood tests for food allergies, saliva tests for food allergies, things of that nature. Frankly, none of them are as good as simply writing down what you eat and doing a basic elimination diet where you get rid of foods that you suspect that might be causing issues and then gradually reintroduce them because you get a lot of false-positives with food allergy tests and so that’s one that I would be really really kinda not as prone to recommend, a food allergy test. Same thing with these tests that test for hydrochloric acid production. There’s a test called a Heidelberg PH test that can gauge hydrochloric acid insufficiency but it’s a little bit invasive and it’s a little bit tough to find. If you’re able to hunt that down, that’s a decent test for hydrochloric acid but again, you can just pay attention to symptoms and in most cases if you get heart burn after a meal, like if you eat a protein-containing meal like a steak, your hydrochloric acid production is probably low. So you don’t have to go out and get tested for something like that necessarily. So I would definitely start off with something like a GI effects kit from metametrix. I’ll link to that in the show notes. If you’re international you can go and see if you can hunt down something similar where you live and again, if you’re a listener and you wanna point us in the direction of something you found where you live, let’s all work together and figure this out, figure this crap out. Get a parasitology test, if you got those type of parasite issues, look into a breath test if you’re concerned about small intestine bacterial overgrowth and as far as like a hydrochloric acid test or an allergy test, I wouldn’t really do those tests, I’d more just pay attention to the way that you feel after you eat certain foods and that’s a better way to kinda keep your finger on the pull of those things. So that’s where I’d start and hopefully that kinda gives you a little bit more basic overview of how to test your gut.
Allie: Hi Ben. I have a question about lyme’s disease. I’ve had lyme’s disease a few years ago and every summer I still get a couple of tick bites a year. I get the ticks off me pretty quickly, I do check twice a day for ticks. But each summer I seem to get some swelling on one of my knees which is I can’t figure out another cause. I’ve been told to use a lyme nosodes spray twice a day which I do use and it does seem to help and I was wondering what your thoughts are on nosodes sprays, how long you could use them, and any other thoughts you have on lyme’s disease. Thank you for a great show. I’ve learned a ton from you and Brock so keep up the good work. Thank you.
Brock: That’s brutal Allie, man.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: But I don’t know where you live but that’s, it must be a beautiful place but it sounds dangerous.
Ben: Yeah, I’m concerned. I’ve got a house I’m building right now up on about 10 acres of woodland and the deer are up there like rodents, just like bouncing all around and so there’s a ton of deer ticks and I’m very concerned about lyme disease. Fortunately, when we moved in a lot of the deer will move out. The ones that don’t will be subject to potentially being lined up via my scope and my hunter’s license. But yes, we will eat them out of existence. My kids will have deer sausage for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Brock: Awesome. Send me some.
Ben: But yeah, this lyme disease is a bacterial infection that’s transmitted by the bite of a deer tick and you get all these flu-like symptoms like achy joints and fatigue and fever and headache and a lot of times you’ll go to a doctor and you get it knocked by antibiotics but there’s this lingering chronic lyme disease that’s a completely different beast altogether and you get a lot of these lyme patients who take the standard treatment of antibiotics to knock out lyme and they continue to have this long-term health problems like poor mental function and joint pain and sleep disturbances and it’s kinda unclear whether it’s this lingering auto-immune response like you’ve got this hyperactive immune reaction after having been subjected to the ravages of the mighty tick or you’ve got this chronic case of the disease that is related to an actual infection that is on-going that somehow hasn’t been knocked out by the antibiotic and it’s kind of a tricky subject because some people believe it’s auto-immune, some people believe it’s chronic infection and it’s unclear really and it actually is, you can find entire like websites and books and programs devoted to eradicating chronic lyme disease and there’s lots of different ways that folks go about it but it certainly is clear that chronic lyme disease or lyme disease can kinda stick with you and in many cases, there are things that go along with lyme disease like parasite infections and basically a lot of co-infections that might actually still be in your body after the lyme disease has been treated and so that’s kind of another issue is that you may have things going along with the lyme disease that you never actually treated in the first place like overlapping conditions that also cause autoimmune responses similar to what Allie is going through if she’s still getting swelling and things of that nature so as far as what you can do about this, there’s not really a really fantastic way to diagnose chronic lyme disease and you know, that’s kind of an issue.
[1:00:54.4]
What is clear though is that there are things that you can do naturally as far as like supplements that you can take to strengthen the body’s ability to repair itself and to allow yourself to be better able to handle a lot of autoimmune issues. So of course, one of those things that should be kinda assumed without saying is that you’d wanna be on a really safe kind of autoimmune diet protocol. I’m a big fan of just like a paleo style autoimmune protocol where you eliminating any potential immune triggers including like you know, tree nuts and lots of different types of night shades and some root vegetables and dairy, soy, wheat, all these common autoimmune triggers and if you were just to google autoimmune diet, you’re gonna find a ton of resources as far as that goes and like on Training Peaks, I’ve written like a 4-week kinda autoimmune how to, you know, that just kinda lays out a basic auto-immune protocol with all your diet kinda written down for you and I would certainly do an autoimmune protocol and we’ll link to that in the show notes but I also take specific herbs and vitamins that have been shown to help with chronic lyme. High dose vitamin b12 is one and listen in to this Friday’s podcast ‘cause we’re gonna talk about absorption of b12 and stuff like that with a guy named Mark Joiner. Really cool kinda like biohacking post but definitely like a liposomal spray for something like a vitamin b12. Coenzyme q10 is another good one and that’s one you can just straight up supplement with preferably in what’s called a ______[1:02:26.7] form. Chromium is a mineral that can really help. If you’re taking trace minerals, you’re already getting a little bit of that. Omega-3 fatty acids which we have already talked about and like a good quality fish oil and then some Chinese adaptogens specifically rhodiola, cordycepts, some of the adaptogens you’re gonna find in something like tianchi, all of that stuff can help out quite a bit as well. And of course this shouldn’t be misconstrued as medical advice, these are just some of the things that have been shown to help out a little bit with lyme disease. There’s actually a book that goes into a lot of these stuff in great detail. It’s called the “Lyme Disease Solution Book” so I would recommend, we’ll link to that in the show notes but I recommend that you surf through the Lyme Disease Solution Book. The author of that book has a pretty good website. It’s over at lymedoctor.com. He’s got a website, he’s got a newsletter, he’s got some good stuff too in terms of a lot of these supplements than can kinda help out like the antioxidants that can help out with lyme and you know, some of the autoimmune procedures and protocols that you wanna do but the actual book, The Lyme Disease Solution Book is really good. Chris Kresser, another podcaster, actually had a really good podcast on lyme disease some time ago and I’ll put a link to that podcast episode in the show notes for you too. It’s about an hour’s worth of just kinda geeking out on lyme disease so I would do that. I would get the dartboard with a picture of a tick on it and hang it up on your wall and do a little bit of voodoo magic on the ticks and throw the darts at them.
Brock: Nice. That would definitely help.
Ben: That would definitely help. This lyme nosodes spray that you’re taking, that’s the, a nosode is just a homeopathic remedy and is prepared from, this is kinda gross but it’s literally prepared from like diseased tissue like bacteria and fungi and parasites and virus particles and yeast disease products and it stimulates your white blood cell production and our immune system response to whatever disease that that particular nosode has been extracted from. It’s a homeopathic medical aid and so like lyme is all of these different components like arnica and yucca extract, magnesia extract, cartilage, golden seal, all of these different things but then that’s combined with actual lymes, the actual disease itself in very very small amounts. It’s similar to how I cured one of my kids of their bee stings by literally I dosed my kid with wasp venom, Terran, when he was 3 years old for 6 months.
[1:05:02.0]
I did gradually increasing titrate doses of homeopathic remedy of prepared wasp. It was wasp, bee, hornet, like every single type of bee that flies around our area, had that prepared and just dosed him with homeopathic remedies for 6 months so there’s that. And that is actually something that I definitely see some value in – homeopathic medicine and I think there’s a lot to it so I would definitely say that yeah, I mean if that’s something that you’re using, then I would stand behind something like that as well so I have now completely exhausted every shred of knowledge I have of lyme disease so my brain is now emptied of lyme disease.
Brock: Okay good. We only have one more question left so just hang on to your brain for just one more question.
Jim: Hi Ben, it’s Jim. I was watching the cross fit games last week and I noticed that a lot of the athletes had that blocky midsection look especially the women. I was wondering which exercises specifically caused that. Is it the deadlifts, is it heavy squatting? I remember in the 70’s and 80’s that Vince Gironda of body building fame used to excuse certain exercises for taking away from that b-tapered mid section look. Any ideas? Thanks. Bye.
Brock: You know I do love me a woman with a blocky midsection.
Ben: That’s right. I wanna feel like I’m hugging a tree trunk when I’m hugging that woman.
Brock: A nice sexy tree trunk.
Ben: That’s right. Bark free preferably.
Brock: Of course.
Ben: Yeah, this can kinda be something that you see quite often, that big thick blocky midsection. Like we’ll put a picture in the show notes of what we’re talking about if you don’t know what we’re talking about. If your lady probably do know but it’s this thick abs that you can get when you’re training and actually it’s kinda interesting because if you look at somebody like Britney Spears like she used to have this nice, little, petite waist and this was like back in the day when Britney Spears was actually pretty sexy and look good, you know, and then she kinda went from this Barbie doll waist into just like, she had this thick muscular waist when she was doing like her dress-up like a snake freakin’ like huge shows when she’ll be at there on stage riding around and you can see like, people would think that I pay too much attention…
Brock: Yeah, I see, you clearly know more about Britney Spears than I will ever know.
Ben: Anyways, her abs was like big. Her waist isn’t tapered anymore, it’s just like this straight-cut waist and like I said, you see that in the cross-fit games too like especially if you watch the cross-fit games on TV or you go to their website, you see this same thing like big blocky abs and some folks are under the misconception that this comes from women doing lots of squats or deadlifts or multi-joint activities and you don’t get abdominal what’s called hypertrophy from doing those type of things. Those are great abdominal bracing activities, those are great for your deep abdominal tissue, they train your obliques, they brace your low back but they don’t actually cause hypertrophy of what’s called your rectus abdominus which is what you’re seeing with that big, blocky look. What’s hypertrophy of the rectus abdominus and hypertrophy or muscle fiber growth in the external obliques. Now there are certain populations of what are called mesomorph syle women with a higher percentage of high-switch muscle fiber who are naturally going to be a little bit more talented at something like say cross-fit and wind up at the games wearing a sport bra where you actually see their midriff and you know, assume that all women who do what they are doing are going to have abs like that when in fact part of it is their genetic makeup. However, you also have people like say, Britney Spears who you know, goes from having a petite Barbie doll style waist to this kinda big thick waist and in her case and in the case of many women, whether they are doing cross-fit or any other type of training, the issue is high volume abdominal training. High volume abdominal training is the type of abdominal training that leaves your stomach and your abs really sore the next day. It’s hypertrophy style abdominal training. You see this in body building women as well. And it’s great for building a 6-pack but many women don’t want the 6-pack look. They want more of kinda like the lean toned, slim abdominal or belly or waistline and an example of like a hypertrophic style abdominal program would be you know like Britney Spears is like doing a thousand crunches a day. Okay, that’s how she made her waist thick.
[1:10:00.8]
And I’m totally not kidding. She was on the thousand crunch a day program. That’s what her trainer put her on. When you look at somebody like a cross-fit athlete, those girls are not getting the thick waist from doing lots of squats and dead lifts but lots of hanging leg raises can do this, lots of oblique work like twists, swings, bent-leg raises, things of that nature, those could do that. Anything that requires repetitive twisting or repetitive flexion and extension of the abdominals like crunches, sit ups, leg raises, anything like that can be an issue versus doing stuff like bracing, doing squats, doing dead lifts, doing front planks, doing side planks, and what are some other moves? Like some yoga moves, some pilates moves, all of those types of abdominal activities are not going to result in thick waist. The type of stuff that gets you thick waist are lots of crunches, lots of sit ups, lots of hanging-leg raises, lots of twisting and doing it as reps, right? Not like holding positions or going through some positions kinda slowly under load like a squat or a dead lift but doing ab workouts, 4 reps. You know, whatever. 4 sets of x number of reps of these 3 different abdominal exercises back to back to back and women who do have a high amount of fast twitch muscle were prone to get blocky abs, that’s the way to get blocky abs and a thick waist and some women can do those types of programs and not get a thick waist like that and I talk about this in my book over at getfitguy.com about how different body shapes respond differently like you’ve got an ectomorph or an endomorph female. They do okay with these hypertrophic style abdominal training routines where as the mesomorph and what’s called the mesoendomorph or the pear-shaped, they tend to get this kinda thick waist, blocky ab type of appearance with targeted, repetitive abdominal work and so you know, it’s kind of different strokes for different folks but what it comes down to is if you’re doing traditional ab training or you’re doing a high amount of hypertrophy style abdominal work, you’re gonna end up with those blocky abs and you’d be better served by doing planking, bracing, and then multi-joint lifts that kinda work flexion and extension of your hips and your low back. So for Jim and for all you ladies listening in, if you don’t want that blocky 6-pack look and you don’t want to use your abdominals as a coin purse for all your quarters or your loonies, are they loonies up there in Canada?
Brock: They are loonies. That’s right.
Ben: Loonies.
Brock: Nice.
Ben: If you don’t wanna put loonies in your stomach which sounds slightly perverted, possibly, or illegal in some states, then do not do traditional abdominal training and that is the direction that I would go. So there you go.
Brock: And in no way are we saying that you, that we judge you either way. I appreciate women’s form in all the different varieties whether it’s blocky or not but it’s up to you.
Ben: Thank you.
Brock: You choose.
Ben: Thank you for the non sexist disclaimer Brock. We have to record that.
Brock: It was still a little sexist ‘cause I did not say ladies in all their forms.
Ben: We love everyone. Oh, and if you love this show, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love and let’s give out something to one of our listeners right now.
Brock: Okay.
Ben: Okay. We’re gonna pick a review off at iTunes and if you’re listening in, and you hear your review read right now, then we are gonna hook you up. I’ve got a big bottle of relaxing, natural, calm bath. You can take your home bath and turn it into your own little relaxing isolation tank where your muscles relax and you detox and you get lulled to sleep and drowned in your bathtub.
Brock: Hooray.
Ben: Hooray. Anyways though, here’s the review. This is by Worldwar5. So Worldwar5, email me [email protected]. I’m gonna hook you up a little care package if you hear this read, send me your address. Title of this is the first podcast I could listen to from beginning to end. So Worldwar5 either has a short attention span or he likes us. Here’s what he says. He says “first time listener, first time reviewer, never a caller. Do not do that dude, I’m not gonna focus. He says first time listener, first time reviewer, never a caller. This is the first podcast I ever listened to all the way through. Usually I get bored and space out but this is informative and entertaining but not as entertaining as the real doctor evil or fat bastard but entertaining nonetheless. Questions are answered with the knowledge that is backed up by references and sources.” No we actually make this stuff up.
Brock: This is totally just made up.
Ben: Anyways, he says, “in other words, you don’t feel as if you’re being sold snake oil.” No actually we do sell snake oil. Those Chinese adaptogenic herbs I mentioned are actually snake oil.
Brock: I spent the whole day bringing snakes out.
Ben: And he says “and fitness nutrition beginners are as likely to find useful information as endurance athletes.” And then he says “these guys pick their ways easily through subjects like colostrum, it comes from boobies, circumcision, find out who is cut and who is not, and heart disease. They avoid politics and uncomfortable junior high boys locker room subjects which I will vehemently deny.”
Brock: Yeah, I believe we talked about those last week.
Ben: We covered just about everything else worth listening to. Alright so worldwar5, thanks for your feedback.
Brock: Yeah.
Ben: And if you would like to leave feedback, we’ll put a link in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/252 so go, leave your review, leave your ranking, leave 5 stars, leave 1 star. We don’t care. We’re gonna play you music either way. So Brock let’s play ‘em out.
Brock: Alright.
Aug 14, 2013 Podcast: How to get fit for “The Survivor”, white rice vs. brown rice, what causes dry mouth, The best ways to test your gut, do you have lyme disease, and what women can do about a thick waist.
Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right, use the Contact button on the app, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, Skype “pacificfit” or use the “Ask Ben” form… but be prepared to wait – we prioritize audio questions over text questions.
—————————————————–
News Flashes:
You can get these News Flashes hot off the presses if you follow Ben on Twitter.com/BenGreenfield, Facebook.com/BGFitness and Google+.
- Another nail in the coffin of Blood Type diets.
- If you’re going to eat a high fat diet and don’t want to “blow up” your liver, include fish oil.
- Want to do “Biggest Loser” style weight loss? Prepare for a drop in your metabolism of nearly 30%!
—————————————————–
Special Announcements:
ONE slot remaining – November 21 to December 4, 2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure with Ben Greenfield – details at pacificfit.net/thailand. Now including the pre-camp: It’s a “high end” triathlon training resort. Brand new facilities – check ’em out! We’re going to do coached sessions every day. It won’t be hardcore training as much as a focus on learning about nutrition, training, fitness, and how to “get the edge” in endurance, life and health!
August 14 to 17: Ketogenic Diets and Exercise Performance. Ben Greenfield, M.S., CSCS, C-ISSN, Jamie Scott, PGDipNutMed, PGDipSportExMed, Mark Sisson, Robb Wolf, B.S., Jimmy Moore. Ben Greenfield are on the Ketogenic Diet for Athlete Performance panel at the Ancestral Health Symposium in August. Visit http://www.ancestryfoundation.org/ for details.
August 23, Friday noon Pacific – Ironman Canada at Whistler Meet-up: All BenGreenfieldFitness fans and athletes are invited to hang out for a lunch hour on Friday before the big race! Come ask your last-minute questions, chill, plan post-race parties and meet other athletes who will be racing. This event will be a Mogul’s coffeehouse and you can RSVP on the BenGreenfieldFitness Facebook page.
September 10 to 12, 2013: The Global Business Triathlon Conference is featuring Ben Greenfield as a speaker. Hilton London Metropole, London, UK – Join us for the premier global gathering of leaders of the triathlon business community. Enjoy three days of learning, networking and fun at the newly renovated Hilton London Metropole, conveniently located near the ITU World Championship activities in Hyde Park. Here is a link to the Facebook page for the London meetup with Ben Greenfield.
February 6 to March 6, 2014: Want to get into the Perfect Health Diet retreat in Austin, Texas? Click here for all details. Ben Greenfield will be presenting at the Feb 6-Mar 6 retreat.
If you’re looking for a topic we covered in the past – we have released the Ben Greenfield Fitness Top Hits, Vol. 1.
Including
1.The Benefits of Fish vs. Fish Oil
2. The Best Ways to Stop Hair Loss
3. Increase Your Hematocrit & Oxygen Levels
4. Strengthen Your Immune System & Shorten the Duration of a Cold
5. Top 10 Ways to Boost Drive
6. Get Rid of Migraines Naturally
7. Become a Curvaceous, Lean, Ripped Female Athlete Without Destroying Your Health
8. Stop Side Stitches as Fast as Possible
9. Is It Possible for a Vegan to Be a Healthy Endurance Athlete
10. How Much Water Do You Really Need to Drink Each Day
And of course, this week’s top iTunes review gets a care package straight from Ben – leave your review for a chance to win one:
—————————————————–
Listener Q&A:
As compiled, edited and sometimes read by Brock, the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast “sidekick”.
Testimonial from Bree
She uses your low-carb triathlete protocol for training and racing and has hit all her markers in training and rocked her 70.3 a few weeks ago. She used UCAN, NatureAminos and PR’ed by more than 10 minutes on a hard course while only taking in about 600 calories.
How To Get Fit For “The Survivor”
Shane says @ 00:18:53
He is going to be on the TV show Survivor South Africa. He is wondering what sort of training and diet he should get himself on to prepare for it. He is pretty fit right now – running and exercising about 2 hour a day. Any direction would be appreciated.
~ Resources I recommend to Shane:
- Link to some of the more difficult Survivor challenges.
- My obstacle course race workout article.
- The Race Day Domination program.
- The Steel Mace Workout and the Steel Mace from Onnit.
- The Brainscape App
- Detox and Gut Healing Pack
White rice vs. Brown Rice
Ben says @ 00:36:18
He is looking for a healthy carbohydrate to put next to his steamed veggies and grass fed butter. He has heard that white rice is the best source but has also heard that there are issues with reheating rice. Should he buy frozen rice in a bag or make it himself? Is brown rice better? What is the best way for him to get about 30g of carbs?
What causes dry mouth
Bruce says @ 00:42:29
About 6 months ago he started getting extreme dry mouth to the point where he has to get up in the night to drink water. He eats a good mixture of healthy foods each day and gets a good amount of exercise but he is a heavy sweater. When he drinks too much water during the day he has to get up in the night to pee. He recently turned 50 – could that be part of the issue?
The best ways to test your gut
Simon says @ 00:48:18
He read the chapter from your book on “How to Fix Your Gut“, which he feels is very comprehensive. He would appreciate a more simple and concise list of things that you recommend people test themselves for in order to get an overall picture of their health.
~ In my reply, I reference:
- GI Effects Kit from Metametrix (same as a comprehensive stool analysis)
- Quintron Breath Test at BreathTests.com
- Comprehensive Parasitology Test
Do You Have Lyme Disease?
Allie says @ 00:57:05
She had Lyme’s Disease a few years ago and every summer she gets a few bites and some swelling in one of her knees. She uses a Lyme Nosodes Spray and is wondering what your thoughts are on that spray and anything else about Lyme’s Disease.
~ In my reply, I reference:
- The Lyme Disease Solution Book
- This Lyme Disease Podcast With Chris Kresser
- Autoimmune Protocol on TrainingPeaks
- Autoimmune Paleo Book
What Women Can Do About A Thick Waist
Jim says @ 01:05:53
He was watching the Cross-Fit Game and noticed that a lot of the athletes (especially the women) have that “blocky midsection” look and is wondering which exercises cause that?